The Life, Times, and Work of Alfred Korzybski with Non-Aristotelian Sightings and Comments on the Passing Scene

Monday, November 16, 2009

What Motivated U.S. Army Major NIdal Hassan?

In June 2007, Major Nidal Hassan gave a lecture on “The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military” instead of the lecture on the medical topic that senior Army doctors expected him to give. The Washington Post has put up the PowerPoint notes which accompanied his talk: Major Hassan's lecture We know what he subsequently did. There were many witnesses to the murder spree at Ft. Hood.

Historian and Political analyst Barry Rubin has written a reasonable (to me) commentary on what many people seem to have a hard time grasping: Hassan's motivation. But Rubin argues quite effectively that the world has a major (no pun intended) problem with Islamism, i.e., the ideology of Militant Islam.

You might ask, "Why am I getting 'political' on this blog?", which has Alfred Korzybski and his work as its subject. Well... Korzybski hammered away at his students to 'face facts' and to learn to face facts. As a student of his work, I take this advice very seriously as key to practicing what he taught and thus conveying what he taught, by example, to others.

Korzybski spoke vigorously against the Nazi, Fascist, and Communist ideologies/movements when it was not popular to do so, well before the start of World War II. The threat of Militant Islam or Islamism seems to me to represent as great a factual danger to civilized life as did these other totalitarian movements that Korzybski opposed. In his 1924 Time-Binding paper, he wrote:

Man is ultimately a doctrinal being. Even our language has its silent doctrines, and no activity of man is free from some doctrines, so that the kind of metaphysics a man has, is not of indifference to his world outlook and his behavior. [Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings 1920-1950, p. 77]

Not only non-Muslims but also many Muslims have a huge problem with a significant number of other Muslims and their interpretation of the religion of Islam, currently widely promulgated. The threat of this deadly doctrine of Islamism is not going to go away by ignoring it because some people consider it politically incorrect to take it seriously. Barry Rubin makes some necessary distinctions while not turning away from what, to some of us, appears obvious. Some of you probably won't like what he has to say. But here's the link: Why I Murdered 13 American Soldiers: Nidal Hassan Explains It All to You

2 comments:

As doctrinal creatures, we cannot escape some doctrines, which may or may not create problems for us. But I am specifically talking in this post about problems related to militant Islam, i.e., Islamism.

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About Bruce I. Kodish

I've received wide acknowledgment as a leading scholar-teacher of the korzybskian discipline of applied epistemology known as 'general semantics'. In 1998, with my wife Susan Presby Kodish, Ph.D., I received the Institute of General Semantics' prestigious J. Talbott Winchell Award. With"deep appreciation and warm thanks" the award acknowledged the Kodish's "...many contributions severally and together to the wider understanding of general semantics as authors, editors, teachers, leaders", and "their concern with the alleviation of social and individual problems, and their active interest in the on-going work in general semantics." I've written the first full-length biography of Alfred Korzybski, author of Manhood of Humanity and Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. My book, Korzybski: A Biography, received the S.I. Hayakawa Book Prize in 2011. Although I am retiring this year after 36 years as a physical therapist, I continue a lively interest in corrective exercise and rehabilitation and have a part-time practice as a consultant and personal trainer specializing in the Alexander Technique of Posture-Movement Education.